Rochdale organisations share how Falinge Park High School donations will help them combat food poverty in the borough

Date published: 11 March 2021

Three Rochdale organisations have shared how donations from Falinge Park High School will help them combat food poverty in the borough.

The school recently made three donations of £800 to Action Together, the Nigeria Community Association and Caring and Sharing. The money was raised by the school’s staff and students this past year, and a large portion will go towards combatting food poverty in the borough.

The school has also supported Rochdale Women's Welfare Association and Army of Kindness.

Action Together

For Action Together, the £800 donation will go towards the budget for its Community Warehouse.

Set up in November 2020, the warehouse contains a stock of food for smaller organisations to supply to different communities across the borough. More than 20 community groups, volunteer organisations and churches have been distributing food from the warehouse to meet their communities’ needs.

The warehouse is part of the Food Solutions Network, a network of all the food providers in the borough.

Kerry Bertram, Action Together’s Strategic Locality Lead, said: “Young people [from Falinge Park High School] have been making care packages, which will come to the warehouse. They can be anything from supplies around home learning or some kind of wellbeing focus, cleaning packs or science kits.

“It's about £2,000 worth of stock that goes out every month to community groups. A proportion of that will be items that been donated to us, but quite a large proportion is stuff we're buying in.

“The £800 donation will have fed lots of families and supported lots of groups over about a month, so we're really grateful.”

 

 

Action Together has a volunteer brokerage service, which matches people to volunteering opportunities.

Volunteers can help out at food banks, manage social media for a charity or become a Covid-19 marshal at a vaccination centre.

Another opportunity is the Street Ambassador scheme, where volunteers collect food donations on behalf of their neighbourhood.

Neighbourhood Facilitator, Julie Durrant said: “The Street Ambassador programme is where we really need the support from the local community. Street Ambassadors try to collect supplies from their local area to keep replenishing our shelves and stocking our warehouse.

“Eventually we won't have funding to replace all the food, [so] we'll have to find it through donations.

“The sooner we can strengthen our Street Ambassador resource, the better."

Volunteering opportunities with Action Together are available here.

 

 

Nigeria Community Association

The £800 donation will support a new venture called the Rochdale African Food Bank.

Launched on Thursday 4 March, the food bank contains culturally appropriate food to serve the Black Minority Ethnic (BME) community.

Mary Adekugbe, Founder and Chairperson said the Nigeria Community Association is “incredibly proud” to be a partner with Falinge Park High School.

She added: “We believe strongly that this partnership can make a real difference to our community. 

“This food bank will help to eliminate hunger among people not working, low-income individuals and struggling families in our community.

“We will reach beneficiaries through word of mouth, council referrals, self-referral, through the church, mosques, schools, police and other voluntary and community group referrals. 

“No one should go hungry at this time. If you have surplus, please kindly support our good cause through donations.”

 

 

The Nigeria Community Association puts on projects and events to create stronger communities and promote equality and diversity.

The Rochdale African Food Bank in Lower Falinge is open every Thursday between 11am and 2pm.

For more information, find the Nigeria Community Association on Facebook or visit their web site: www.ncaro.co.uk

 

 

Caring and Sharing

For Caring and Sharing, the £800 donation will fund essential food supplies for people in the community.

CEO of Caring and Sharing Nicky Iginla said: “We are grateful for [the donation] as we believe it will go a long way to help our organisation carry out some of our activities, such as providing culturally appropriate foods and essentials to families that are in need.

“We also plan to help some families who are on a pay as you go electric and gas energy to top up such as we believe some households are struggling in this pandemic and we are in the community to provide adequate support and help wherever and whenever possible. 

“We as an organisation would be glad if the Rochdale community can support us in the areas of donations and voluntary work as there are people that are shielding, isolated or vulnerable that need our support. Nothing is too small and no hour is too short.”

Caring and Sharing supports and empowers BAME individuals, asylum seekers and the deprived in the community.

The organisation has been delivering food parcels to families in Rochdale during the pandemic.

For more information, visit https://caringandsharingrochdale.org/ or find Caring and Sharing on Facebook.